


The Only Thing

by missbecky



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, Fix-It of Sorts, Grieving, M/M, References to Eggsy/Tilde, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 11:01:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12167535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missbecky/pseuds/missbecky
Summary: A couple hours into the flight home, it gets dark outside the plane’s windows. Eggsy sits still, watching the light drain from the sky.“The only thing I know for sure,” he says, “is that whatever happens, I can’t do any of it without you.”





	The Only Thing

**Author's Note:**

> There are major spoilers here for the events of Kingsman: The Golden Circle. This will probably also be the only fic I ever write that acknowledges some of these events. After this, I'm in complete denial.
> 
> With huge thanks to Niko for the beta read and feedback. <3

The plane takes off from Cambodia and they head for Kentucky, their Statesman pilot charting their course without a word. Eggsy busies himself at first with cleaning up, digging the dirt out from under his fingernails, drinking a stiff martini and then another. He does his best to stay focused only on what’s in front of him; his thoughts are too scattered and he knows it, jumping from one horror to the next with no transition.

A couple hours into the flight, it gets dark outside the plane’s windows. Eggsy sits still, watching the light drain from the sky. By now the bruises are forming, the aches and pains settling deep in his joints. His neck burns where Whiskey's lasso throttled him. It hurts when he breathes in too deep, a stabbing pain in his side that doesn't bode well for the future.

Across from him Harry sits stiffly in his leather seat. There's a painful-looking lump on his forehead where Whiskey flung the skillet at him in the diner. Colourful nail polish dots his suit and even speckles his hair in a couple places. But what gets Eggsy, what makes him crack when nothing else did, is the rope burn on his throat. 

So close. Too fucking close. After everything they went through, after losing Harry only to get him back again, he had almost lost him for good.

"You okay?" The words are a croak; it hurts to talk. 

Harry gives him a smile that practically reeks with false bravado. "Of course. Are you?"

Eggsy wants to say yes. To say sure. To sound as confident as Harry just did. But to his horror, he finds himself shaking his head.

Immediately Harry's smile vanishes, and yeah, it was fake as hell. He looks at Eggsy with concern. "How badly hurt are you?"

He doesn't know. He's fine. He'll be fine. Whatever.

But nothing else is fine. Harry is hurt. Harry almost fucking _died._

And Merlin. Merlin _is_ dead.

And Roxy. And JB. And all of them.

"Eggsy?" Harry stands up, wincing just a tiny bit.

His throat closes up as he watches Harry approach. He ought to say something, should stop Harry before he gets too worried, lie and say he's okay. But the words just won't come.

He's never going to forget the sound of Merlin singing.

Harry sits beside him. He smells of blood and burning, and faintly of nail polish. One trouser cuff is shredded and bloodied from the robot dog that savaged him; it's amazing that he's not limping. Maybe the pain just hasn't sunk in yet.

"Where are you hurt?" Harry's hand settles on his left shoulder, warm and comforting. It's the way Harry touched him during the firefight in Poppyland, a reassuring contact, a reminder that he wasn't in this alone, that he was fighting _with_ someone. 

Eggsy shakes his head. "I'm fine," he murmurs.

He’s not, though, and he knows it. Worse, Harry must know it, too.

Harry doesn’t say anything, though. But neither does he pull away. He just sits there, his hand on Eggsy’s shoulder, a presence by his side. The way he was during the fight. The way he wasn’t during those long lonely months when Eggsy lived in Harry’s house and slept with someone else in Harry’s bed and never really stopped thinking about him.

The silence spins out between them as they sit there. It’s a silence that can’t be filled by mere words, that demands more than simple sentences. There is _weight_ to that silence, an almost physical thing he can reach out and touch.

It doesn’t come between them, though. It surrounds them. Encloses them. They share it, the way they have shared almost everything since Harry first looked at him and _knew_ him in that awful padded room.

They will have to talk about it sooner or later. Merlin. Roxy. Everyone at Kingsman. The shop that smelled of tweed and wool and always had the fire burning even on the hottest days. The beautiful mansion where he learned how to be a Kingsman. That white house in Stanhope Mews.

But there are other things too, that Eggsy can’t share. Harry doesn’t know anything about Tilde, about how much Eggsy loved her even while one part of him never stopped missing Harry and wishing he was there. The way JB used to pant up at him so it looked like he was smiling, and Eggsy would grin in return and scritch him behind the ears. Brandon’s laugh and how he saved Eggsy’s life one miserably cold night when Dean was on a tear and he just had get out of there and so ended up in Brandon’s flat instead of freezing to death on the street.

And yet those are things he _will_ share eventually. Because if there’s one thing he knows already, it’s that he can’t keep anything from Harry Hart. All he has to do is remember how quickly it took him to go from not wanting to tell Harry about his relationship with Tilde to spilling everything.

Harry’s hand is still on his shoulder. Nothing Harry does is by accident; he must think Eggsy needs the comforting touch. Or maybe he needs it too. He’s lost everything too, after all. And it sure as fuck wasn’t easy for him to get himself back.

He saw the footage, what they did to Harry with the water. No one wanted to show it to him, but he had demanded to see it after Merlin had -- rather reluctantly -- admitted that they had tried everything they could think of in order to trigger the return of Harry’s memory. What the fuck does that mean, Eggsy had insisted, until they had no choice but to show him.

Even thinking of it now makes him want to punch the fucking walls.

He looks over at Harry, sees the way Harry is carefully looking at nothing, his empty gaze fixed on the seat across from them. He sees the bright colours of the nail polish dotting Harry’s suit, the swelling around his lip, his cheek, his forehead. He sees the rope burn around Harry’s neck, that thin red line, proof of how close he came to losing Harry a second time.

And that’s when Eggsy breaks.

He turns in his seat so suddenly that Harry almost recoils as his attention is abruptly jerked back to their situation. Eggsy sees this but ignores it. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything just then except the man sitting next to him, the man he loved and lost and almost lost again.

He raises a hand, sees it drifting upward like it belongs to a stranger. Those aren’t his knuckles skinned and bruised, one nail torn off. But when he touches Harry’s neck, the featherlight brush of contact, it shivers all through his body.

Harry sits still. He looks at Eggsy calmly through his remaining eye.

Eggsy brushes his thumb over the rope burn. So close. So fucking close. If Harry had been even a split second slower, that lasso would have torn him in two -- and Eggsy’s heart along with it.

He doesn’t even know he’s leaning in until his breath is warm on Harry’s skin. It’s not something he thinks about. It’s just something he has to do. He _has_ to.

Harry tastes of sweat, of salt, of soap from his last shower. His pulse beats beneath Eggsy’s lips, elevated but steady. The mark left by the rope feels warmer than the rest of his skin. His hand remains on Eggsy’s shoulder, holding on a little tighter than before. But he doesn’t move an inch.

Back in Kentucky Eggsy had known exactly what he was doing when he walked up to Harry with the intention of hugging him. This time it just sort of happens without him even realising it. His arm slides up and around Harry’s back. He leans in still more, sinking down as he goes, breathing out as his parted lips follow the line of Harry’s throat.

Harry’s grasp lingers on his shoulder a few moments longer, then as the contact becomes physically awkward, his hand eases downward, over Eggsy’s spine, down to rest on his lower back, near the place where he still hurts from where Tequila slammed him with the stock of his rifle.

His head comes to rest on Harry’s shoulder. It should be uncomfortable leaning in the way he is, but the various pains of his body seem more distant now. He feels good. Safe.

He closes his eyes.

Right away, though, he sees the jungle, Merlin standing there so bravely, giving him the okay sign. Merlin sacrificing himself when it was Eggsy’s fuckup that cost him his life, Eggsy who didn’t find the mine with the minesweeper but instead had to fucking step on it. Merlin smiling at him like everything was going to be okay, when nothing can ever be the same again now that he’s gone.

He’s never going to forget. Never going to forgive himself.

_Can’t you see that everything I’ve done is about trying to repay him?_

The words echo from the past, words he’s heard over and over in his head over the past year, sometimes with anger, sometimes with bitter sorrow. Now he hears them with complete understanding. Because if there is ever anything he can do, ever any way he can make up for Merlin’s loss, he will do it. He will do it without hesitation.

“I didn’t get a chance to thank you before,” Harry says quietly. Eggsy feels the rumble of his voice as much as he hears it.

“Didn’t do nothin’,” Eggsy says. He opens his eyes but doesn’t pick up his head. From this vantage point he can see the stubble growing in on Harry’s jaw. The rope burn is vividly red on his throat.

“You brought me back,” Harry says. “You saved my life as much as Ginger did. Perhaps more so.”

Eggsy sits up then. He can still feel the warmth of Harry in his arms when they hugged in that padded cell, the way Harry had been trembling, the moment Harry had surrendered and relaxed into their embrace. He had gambled everything on that little puppy, on that last chance to restore Harry to himself.

He still doesn’t know what he would have done if it hadn’t worked.

“Couldn’t give up on you,” he says. “Same as you did for me.”

Harry gives him a smile. It’s a little thing, a mere upturn of his lips, nothing like the full smiles he had displayed before he remembered who he was. But to Eggsy it’s still one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.

And this time it’s Harry who leans in. Not much, but it’s enough. And Eggsy, who had missed him for a year and thought about him for longer than that, tips his head up and meets him.

It’s the sweetest kiss he’s ever had. Their lips meet, light and cool. Harry’s hand tightens infinitesimally on his hip. Eggsy applies pressure with his arm, holding Harry close, afraid to let him go. He lost Harry once, almost lost him again in that diner. To lose him a third time would be too much.

They draw apart, Eggsy still leaning inward, Harry’s head still inclined. One move on either of their parts will bring them into contact again.

It’s not right, what he’s just done. He ought to feel guilty, and he does, a knife-twist in his stomach. But if he’s honest with himself, he feels more guilty not because he did it, but because he doesn’t regret it. That kiss was so perfect, so true. He aches for thinking there might never be another one, that this might be all there is.

He has to go home. He has to talk to Tilde. He has to find out what’s become of the ruins of Kingsman. He has to bury his friends and shed all the tears he’s been shoving down deep inside for too long.

But he doesn’t have to do those things alone.

He sits up straight, shifting over in his seat and pulling his arm back so he’s not embracing Harry anymore. In response, Harry releases him and resumes his usual upright posture. As he does, Eggsy sees a flash of hurt in his eye, just as quickly blinked away as though it never existed.

“You know that email you wrote me?” Eggsy asks. “The one you didn’t send, the one from before the church?” Merlin had found it on Harry’s laptop and sent it to him, something for him to read if he wanted. It had taken him almost a month to work up the courage to read it; he had cried for hours when he was finished.

Slowly Harry nods. He seems braced for something, unsure of where Eggsy is going with this.

“You said you hoped I was ready for what comes next,” Eggsy says. He knows the email by heart, all those things Harry had written down but never got to say. All those words he had never got to hear.

“Well, I’m not,” he says. “I never was.” He takes a breath. “But now that you’re back, I think I could be.”

Surprise registers on Harry’s face, and for a moment he looks the way he did in Kentucky, young and open and scarily vulnerable. “Eggsy.”

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen,” Eggsy says. He has no idea at all what the future holds for him. Maybe there will never be another Kingsman. Maybe it’s all gone for good, as dead as his friends. Maybe he’ll end up alone in a strange house where there are no butterflies on the walls and no memories.

And maybe not.

In Poppyland they had fought side by side with such precision it was like they had been doing it for years. He had known instinctively where Harry would be, what his next move would be. He had trusted Harry to have his back, to know the next step of the intricate dance of the fight. And Harry had trusted him in turn, a hand on his shoulder, a presence at his back, stepping in at just the right moment with a perfectly timed shot to save his life.

He knows they can fight together. What he wants to know is if they can live together.

“The only thing I know for sure,” he says, “is that whatever happens, I can’t do any of it without you.”

Harry’s gaze softens. He smiles at Eggsy, and it’s like the brilliant blue sky above Mont Blanc, like the first time he said Eggsy’s name when he remembered. 

“You won’t have to,” he promises.


End file.
